'Even an elf drunk on eggnog could see how this dire comedy would end'

Stuffed (BBC1)

Rating:

Guz Khan's turkey of a festive sitcom, Stuffed, has one claim to originality. It is the first show I've seen that needs its own built-in spoiler alert.

The mawkish pay-off to what passed for a storyline was visible 20 minutes in, when Sue Johnston started waving her arms from the sidelines.

She played a sweet old lady with a taste for cannabis brownies, written in so blatantly as the solution to everyone's problems that she might as well have had Plot Device tattooed on her forehead.

By the final ten minutes, even an elf smashed on eggnog could have guessed the ending. 

It's a good job Stuffed wasn't scheduled for Christmas Eve, because the 'surprise twist' arrived with so many flashing lights and sirens, it might have spooked Santa's reindeer.

Khan, a one-note comedian whose only gag is his grumpiness, plays Arslan Farooqi, a bored office worker who lands an unexpected £8,000 bonus.

If Ars (as his wife calls him) had stopped to think, he'd have realised that the sum was a mistake — he spends half his working day having rap battles with his half-witted brother-in-law, Jamie (Theo Barklem-Biggs).

Mrs Ars (Morgana Robinson) suddenly realises she's had a lifelong dream that she's never mentioned before, of going to Lapland for Christmas. 

So off they rush with their two sassy daughters and Jamie, to the Arctic Circle and a festive wonderland that looks like it was filmed at a Skegness garden centre in February.

To add to the fun, Ars isn't all that keen on Christmas. He switches off Cliff's Mistletoe And Wine on the radio, always the sign of a grinch. And he wears a hoodie marked 'Property of Allah'.

Ars's bosses soon spot their mistake and threaten him with immediate dismissal and imprisonment if he doesn't hand the money back. Of course, he has no choice but to enter his family in the Lapland talent contest, hoping to win the cash prize.

Will that save him? No, we've already guessed that dear fluffy Sue Johnston is going to (spoiler alert! spoiler alert!) give him the money . . . because like all old people, she's got far too much of it and nothing else to spend it on.

As we worked our way towards this denouement at glacial speed, there was little else to do but count the race gags. 'This place is whiter than the front row at a Taylor Swift gig,' grumbled Ars in the Arctic, and he wasn't talking about the snow.

In case we missed the point, he scowled at a couple of Santa's little helpers and muttered, 'They ain't never seen a brown bruv.'

According to Finland's national statistics institute, more than ten per cent of the country's population are now immigrants, a high proportion of them from Africa and Asia.

To suggest people there haven't ever 'seen a brown bruv' sounds a bit... well, not racist, of course, but possibly, um, outdated.